How my Pastors Taught me to Give

 

How my Pastors Taught me to Give

Two True Stories about Giving to the Lord.

Many years ago, our children were teenagers, and we had added a room addition to our growing home, with the walls covered with plasterboard, and the nail holes dotted with some builders paste cover up.

We were too busy to finish the room and the walls looked like poka-dots for wallpaper.

One day we had some folks over for refreshments, and our pastor noted our dot-colored walls.  

A few days later, we received a phone call from Pastor Gene asking if anyone would be home and could he come over for a bit. Or course, come on over we said.  Soon, he arrived in white overalls, a cap on his head and a bucket of undercoat paint with a roller pan and brush.

Pastor said, The Lord told me to come over and gift you a few hours of labor. So we opened the door and welcomed him in.

Pastor worked and gave it his best shot and soon our walls had the first coat of paint ready for the topcoat in a few days.  Now the dots were gone, and the atmosphere was changed.

A few years later when this pastor moved to a new location, we were led to gift him a hefty love offering that met a need in their family at just the right time.

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A new Pastor arrived, and he also taught me how to give. 

It was the year of the World's Fair in New York and we decided to go.  The only way we could do this was to borrow a large sum from our local bank so that we could drive across the country with our teen-age children to New York.  We figured it would be a memory and a worthwhile excursion. 

As we prepared to leave early that morning, we received a phone call from the pastor's wife.

Sister Pastor Roberta notified us that Pastor requested that we stop by their home first as we drove out of town, so we did.  Pastor Earl was outside watering his plants, and he motioned for my husband to come to where he was.

Soon my husband returned to our car almost with tears in his eyes.  He informed me that Pastor had given him $500 for our trip and he wanted us to have a wonderful time.

Later we were able to gift him back in various ways, one was to do some loving care for his children at a time they needed special attention.

Sometimes, your gift to others is a manual labor of love, and other times, for no particular reason, you are led by the Holy Spirit to gift someone with perhaps a couple of dollars or more, or some item from your pantry. 

Just be obedient when God says, go ahead and give, and understand that God will always make it up to you somewhere down the line. God is taking notes on your obedience to respond as He directs and asks us to follow. Remember that God's measure cup is bigger than our cup.